Category: Bulletin Inserts

During the Easter season, Sermons That Work is pleased to present a weekly bulletin insert each week of reflections from bishops of The Episcopal Church on the resurrection of our Lord. Check back each week for a brief exploration of how Jesus Christ’s rising from the grave changes everything. To listen to this reflection, open and subscribe to the Sermons That Work podcast.

Week 5: Reflections on the Resurrection

Fairy tales, fables, and Bible stories offer us narratives to live by. While the stories are deep and transforming, we often tend toward the soundbites of wisdom that may have stemmed from the Bible or other literary treasure.

“Honesty is the best policy.”
“Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”
“Where there is a will there is a way.”

As a child, I went to church and Sunday school. Content was delivered in simple terms. Matters of faith stayed on the level of repetition of familiar stories and pithy wisdom. As most children are, I was drawn to the liturgy. In “big” church there were symbols and rituals to explore. There was an intriguing story unfolding each Sunday – and in myself. The liturgy carried us to the table where the feast of bread and wine, body and blood, was to be found. There our personal narrative merged with that of Jesus. The death and resurrection we know in the Christian story was our story too.

“Jesus died and rose again.”
“Jesus died so we might live.”

These can be pithy phrases as well. They could easily appear on a billboard. When we are baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we bravely step into the rhythm of dying and rising as we move through the ups and downs of life. It is the physical process of death and resurrection in nature that generates new life, and it is the spiritual equivalent that brings forth new life within us. We see the posture in Jesus’ body; arms outstretched, suffering, and yet, bearing an open and accepting heart. Welcome death. Both physical and spiritual deaths take us to a darkness we cannot imagine. Resurrection always comes and delivers us to a light that in its grace and beauty is unspeakable. Life is not the same but new life has emerged.

I have found in my own life that while I may not understand intellectually what is happening as life’s circumstances invite me to welcome the process of death and resurrection, my Christian journey has formed me to trust this spiritual process. After all, it is the heart of our Christian faith. Knowing it is true one can hold fast to deep peace despite the worst that life offers. In the darkness we can wait until light and new life comes again.

This season, may you dwell deeply in the Easter story, dying and rising with the living God we know in Jesus Christ. May your trust in the process of death and resurrection increase, and may new life make you a beautiful witness to the glory of God!

 +Mary Gray-Reeves
Easter 2022

Bulletin inserts

This text, entitled “Death and Resurrection Isn’t Just for Jesus,” was written by the Rt. Rev. Mary Gray-Reeves, who served as Bishop Diocesan of El Camino Real from 2007 until 2020. She now serves as the Managing Director of The College for Bishops of The Episcopal Church, supporting the education and formation of all bishops in The Episcopal Church. She makes her home in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Published by the Office of Formation of The Episcopal Church, 815 Second Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017

© 2022 The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. All rights reserved.

These weekly bulletin inserts provide information about the history, music, liturgy, mission, and ministry of The Episcopal Church. For more information, please contact us at stw@episcopalchurch.org.

Sermons That Work

For more than 20 years, Sermons That Work, a ministry of The Episcopal Church’s Office of Communication, has provided free sermons, Bible studies, bulletin inserts, and other resources that speak to congregations across the Church. Our writers and readers come from numerous and varied backgrounds, and the resources we provide are used in small house churches, sprawling cathedrals, and everything between.

Church of the Redeemer

Church of the Redeemer: Worshiping God, living in community, and reaching out to the world around us. We are an Episcopal Church serving north King County and south Snohomish County, Washington. As you travel your road, go with friends walking the way of Jesus at Redeemer.

Church of the Redeemer is at 6220 Northeast 181st Street in Kenmore, Washington. The campus is a short distance north of Bothell Way, near the Burke-Gilman Trail. The entrance looks like a gravel driveway. The campus is larger on the inside than it is on the outside. And we managed to hide a large building on the side of a hill that is not easily seen from the street.

The Episcopal Church welcomes you.

During the Easter season, Sermons That Work is pleased to present a weekly bulletin insert each week of reflections from bishops of The Episcopal Church on the resurrection of our Lord. Check back each week for a brief exploration of how Jesus Christ’s rising from the grave changes everything. To listen to this reflection, open and subscribe to the Sermons That Work podcast.

Week 4: Reflections on the Resurrection

In John’s version of Easter, Mary lingers at the empty tomb after Peter and John run quickly away. When the risen Jesus appears in front of her, she mistakes him for the gardener. It’s an understandable miss. In the grip of all the trauma and grief from the events of Good Friday, she certainly wouldn’t be expecting the one for whom she grieves to be suddenly standing in front of her. It’s easy to overlook that moment as an unimportant detail.

However, as I return to this story year after year, I’ve come to think it’s not a mistake at all, that Mary gets it exactly right, and that this detail helps us understand why the Resurrection really matters.

The orginal vocation to which God calls humanity is tilling and keeping the world God has made. We initially failed in that calling, choosing ourselves and our own way over God and God’s way of love. The whole arc of scripture is essentially the story of God’s project to reforest a world that has become desolate with suffering, violence, and death as a result of our rejection of God. Of course, Jesus is the gardener! His resurrection is the unmistakable assurance of God’s intention to restore the desert we have made of the world to the original garden God intended, lush with the fruits of love, life, justice, and peace.

Jesus died a real death. The same death each of us fears, and that we have seen take so many we love. For the Resurrection to mean anything, it must be every bit as real as that death. Jesus the gardener reminds us that, as an Easter people, the point of our faith and our lives is not to escape from the world and its pain, but rather to join Jesus in renewing the world, planting seeds of hope, watering the parched places of pain, tilling the soil toward justice, working the land to nurture the feast of love God intended. We don’t find the Beloved Community by retreating to somewhere else, we find it by following Jesus to where the pain is, and by digging, by tilling, by keeping.

Plant a tree in these days of Easter. Grow a garden. Make it a sign and sacrament of how we are called in every moment to bear witness to the great good news that death is not what it appears to be. Even now, the green shoots of faith and hope are bringing about God’s perfect reign of love, joy, and life that knows no end. Alleluia!

Bulletin inserts

This reflection was written by the Rt. Rev. Craig Loya. Bishop Loya was consecrated the X Bishop of the Episcopal Church in Minnesota on June 6, 2020. He served as Dean of Trinity Cathedral in Omaha, Nebraska from 2013-2020, and was the Canon to the Ordinary in the Episcopal Diocese of Kansas from 2009-2013. He received his Master of Divinity from Yale University and a Diploma in Anglican Studies from Berkeley Divinity School at Yale in 2002.

Published by the Office of Formation of The Episcopal Church, 815 Second Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017

© 2022 The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. All rights reserved.

These weekly bulletin inserts provide information about the history, music, liturgy, mission, and ministry of The Episcopal Church. For more information, please contact us at stw@episcopalchurch.org.

Sermons That Work

For more than 20 years, Sermons That Work, a ministry of The Episcopal Church’s Office of Communication, has provided free sermons, Bible studies, bulletin inserts, and other resources that speak to congregations across the Church. Our writers and readers come from numerous and varied backgrounds, and the resources we provide are used in small house churches, sprawling cathedrals, and everything between.

Church of the Redeemer

Church of the Redeemer: Worshiping God, living in community, and reaching out to the world around us. We are an Episcopal Church serving north King County and south Snohomish County, Washington. As you travel your road, go with friends walking the way of Jesus at Redeemer.

Church of the Redeemer is at 6220 Northeast 181st Street in Kenmore, Washington. The campus is a short distance north of Bothell Way, near the Burke-Gilman Trail. The entrance looks like a gravel driveway. The campus is larger on the inside than it is on the outside. And we managed to hide a large building on the side of a hill that is not easily seen from the street.

The Episcopal Church welcomes you.

During the Easter season, Sermons That Work is pleased to present a weekly bulletin insert each week of reflections from bishops of The Episcopal Church on the resurrection of our Lord. Check back each week for a brief exploration of how Jesus Christ’s rising from the grave changes everything. To listen to this reflection, open and subscribe to the Sermons That Work podcast.

Week 3: Reflections on the Resurrection

Jesus said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe” (John 20:27).

Jesus’ hands, feet, and side remain wounded as he appears to his first followers after his resurrection. He has risen from the dead yet remains wounded. What is the Holy Trinity telling us with this not insignificant detail? This is Jesus, after all, who made lepers clean, gave hearing to a man born deaf, and sight to one born blind. Jesus fed the multitudes, walked on water, calmed the storm, and raised the dead. Jesus healed the centurion’s servant without even stepping foot in his yard. Jesus, who in so many ways showed that his power was unlimited, does not heal himself.

Jesus comes back still bearing humanity’s marks on his flesh. If Jesus rose healed over, nice and neat, we could be tempted to see the cross as less signficant. We could decide that suffering, particularly suffering and sacrifice for others, holds no meaning for us. Instead, we see how far the compassion of the Holy Trinity extends. Compassion means “suffering with.” Jesus had compassion for Thomas whose doubts had overtaken his faith. Jesus offers Thomas the proof the disciple needs to understand that, though Jesus died, he has truly risen from the grave.

For me, the most astounding part of these wounds is that it reveals Jesus as vulnerable. The literal meaning of vulnerable is “able to be wounded.” God the Son was fully human as well as fully divine, and so able to be wounded. He was wounded by humans for the sake of humanity. This matters to our day-to-day lives, as we are called to live our bodily, daily existence, transformed by the Christ who is present with us in our suffering and loss. Jesus, who felt the pain of what humans did to him, knows suffering. Jesus, who experienced abandonment on the cross, knows that pain – and yet will never abandon you.

To love is to make oneself vulnerable. Jesus’ vulnerability shows the depths of God’s love for all humanity. The Holy Trinity could have remained outside of creation as a righteous judge. Instead, God entered the creation in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. A necessary part of being one of us is emotional and physical vulnerability. People could and did reject him and put him to death. Yet Jesus did not give up on loving us, even when the cost of that love was death on a cross.

Whatever you are facing, you have alongside and within you a loving God who understands fully. Ask Jesus to touch your wounded life with his hands that still bear the marks of what we humans did and yet remain open, reaching out with love and healing.

Bulletin inserts

This reflection, titled “Touch My Hands and Side”, was written by the Rt. Rev. Frank Logue. Logue is the bishop of the Diocese of Georgia. He previously served as the church planter for King of Peace Episcopal Church in Kingsland, Georgia, and as canon to the ordinary of the diocese he now serves as bishop.

Published by the Office of Formation of The Episcopal Church, 815 Second Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017

© 2022 The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. All rights reserved.

These weekly bulletin inserts provide information about the history, music, liturgy, mission, and ministry of The Episcopal Church. For more information, please contact us at stw@episcopalchurch.org.

Sermons That Work

For more than 20 years, Sermons That Work, a ministry of The Episcopal Church’s Office of Communication, has provided free sermons, Bible studies, bulletin inserts, and other resources that speak to congregations across the Church. Our writers and readers come from numerous and varied backgrounds, and the resources we provide are used in small house churches, sprawling cathedrals, and everything between.

Church of the Redeemer

Church of the Redeemer: Worshiping God, living in community, and reaching out to the world around us. We are an Episcopal Church serving north King County and south Snohomish County, Washington. As you travel your road, go with friends walking the way of Jesus at Redeemer.

Church of the Redeemer is at 6220 Northeast 181st Street in Kenmore, Washington. The campus is a short distance north of Bothell Way, near the Burke-Gilman Trail. The entrance looks like a gravel driveway. The campus is larger on the inside than it is on the outside. And we managed to hide a large building on the side of a hill that is not easily seen from the street.

The Episcopal Church welcomes you.

During the Easter season, Sermons That Work is pleased to present a weekly bulletin insert each week of reflections from bishops of The Episcopal Church on the resurrection of our Lord. Check back each week for a brief exploration of how Jesus Christ’s rising from the grave changes everything. To listen to this reflection, open and subscribe to the Sermons That Work podcast.

Week 2: Reflections on the Resurrection

In the Gospel of Mark, the women in the resurrection narrative find an empty tomb, but no signs of Jesus. How would you respond if all you encountered was an empty tomb? Would you believe Jesus was alive?

On the one hand, we have the benefit of 2,000 years of Easter celebrations. We know how the story ends. However, the events of the past few years have placed many of us in the posture of the women from Mark’s Gospel. We’ve lived through multiple pandemics: COVID-19, dramatic weather patterns indicating an environmental crisis, a political system which seems broken almost beyond repair, and the acknowledgement of systemic racism embedded in all aspects of American life. At times, it has felt like the empty tomb on Easter morning as we searched for signs of God’s presence in the midst of so much pain and despair. Do we believe Jesus is alive?

The women’s response to the empty tomb can help us navigate our current circumstances. In order for the women to experience the risen Lord, they had to return to Galilee. Returning to Galilee entails going to the margins, far from the bright lights of the city. Galilee was the place where Jesus healed the sick and fed the hungry, where he drove out demons and preached words of hope, where he restored people to community. In Galilee, we look beyond our own needs and respond compassionately to others. And that’s where we’ll find God, among the least, the lost and the lonely.

Intractable problems aren’t easily resolved but we can make a difference when we collaborate with others as partners in God’s vineyard. The question is whether we are willing to journey to Galilee and commit ourselves to the ministry of repentance, reconciliation and restoration. The resurrection isn’t a one time event which occurred 2,000 years ago – it has implications for how we structure our lives today. We participate in the resurrection when we work to make the kingdom of God manifest on earth.

Beloved, resurrected life is available this side of the grave. There’s an assignment with your name written on it and it’s waiting for you in Galilee. In this season of Easter, may we courageously share the love of God with our fellow companions and everyone we encounter along the way. The Good News of Jesus Christ is too amazing to keep to ourselves. So let’s journey together to Galilee. Amen.

Bulletin inserts

This reflection was written by the Rt. Rev. Phoebe Roaf. Bishop Roaf grew up in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Following her work as a public policy analyst and an attorney, she was ordained as a priest in the Diocese of Louisiana. She served congregations in New Orleans and Richmond, Va., prior to her ordination and consecration as the 4^th Bishop of the Diocese of West Tennessee on May 4, 2019.

Published by the Office of Formation of The Episcopal Church, 815 Second Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017

© 2022 The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. All rights reserved.

These weekly bulletin inserts provide information about the history, music, liturgy, mission, and ministry of The Episcopal Church. For more information, please contact us at stw@episcopalchurch.org.

Sermons That Work

For more than 20 years, Sermons That Work, a ministry of The Episcopal Church’s Office of Communication, has provided free sermons, Bible studies, bulletin inserts, and other resources that speak to congregations across the Church. Our writers and readers come from numerous and varied backgrounds, and the resources we provide are used in small house churches, sprawling cathedrals, and everything between.

Church of the Redeemer

Church of the Redeemer: Worshiping God, living in community, and reaching out to the world around us. We are an Episcopal Church serving north King County and south Snohomish County, Washington. As you travel your road, go with friends walking the way of Jesus at Redeemer.

Church of the Redeemer is at 6220 Northeast 181st Street in Kenmore, Washington. The campus is a short distance north of Bothell Way, near the Burke-Gilman Trail. The entrance looks like a gravel driveway. The campus is larger on the inside than it is on the outside. And we managed to hide a large building on the side of a hill that is not easily seen from the street.

The Episcopal Church welcomes you.

During the Easter season, Sermons That Work is pleased to present a weekly bulletin insert each week of reflections from bishops of The Episcopal Church on the resurrection of our Lord. Check back each week for a brief exploration of how Jesus Christ’s rising from the grave changes everything. To listen to this reflection, open and subscribe to the Sermons That Work podcast.

Week 1: Reflections on the Resurrection

The Gospel for the Sunday after Easter tells us of Thomas who, famously, in his doubt, requires the certainty of touching His Lord’s hands and side before he will believe. The Lord does not rebuke him, though He does bless the later followers ready to believe without this evidence. But at the hearing of His Lord’s voice, Thomas, without touching, responds in faith: “My Lord and my God.” This is a reflection on these themes.

In chapter 15 of his first letter to the Church in Corinth, Paul tells us that if there is no resurrection of the dead, then “we are of all people most to be pitied” (v. 19). Apparently Eastertide is joyful, but also risky! God Himself is clearly not risk averse: witness how He enlists Adam, Abraham, Mary, etc. in risky missions with varied results. Likewise the risen Jesus Christ calls us His people to a risky following. In this vein, great modern philosophers have compared the life of faith to a gamble (Pascal) or a leap (Kiekegaard).

On the other hand, we who are “wearied by the changes and chances” of this life (Book of Common Prayer) quite reasonably come to church to rest in something that can be counted on, that is certain. Isn’t this what Jesus encourages us to do when he tells us to build our homes on rock and not sand (Matthew 7:24)? How do we balance the reality of risk and the longing for something certain? How can we conceive of this certainty that does not close off our minds and hearts?

In the thirteen century, Thomas Aquinas poses for himself this very question: is hope certain (Summa II/II, 18.4)? He answered “yes and no,” which may seem the kind of answer that gave scholastics a bad name! But it is what he means by “yes and no” which is helpful to us. Do we have a certain hope in Christ? Thomas replies that, insofar as we are doing the hoping, it is most uncertain, like everything about us. But insofar as it is Christ in whom we hope, it is utterly certain. By “certain,” he does not mean something that can be proved with a theorem, but rather he means that the One in whom we hope is trustworthy. “Certainty,” like faith, has a “fiduciary” dimension.

At the heart of the Christian life is being summoned anew by the news of the resurrection of Jesus. It does not depend on us, as if faith were some problem solved in our heads (though God does call us to faithful thinking), nor an exertion of our will (though He would have us love Him with all our wills). Rather we are continually turned away from our untrustworthy selves to our trustworthy Lord. As a result, I am given the gift of an uncertain certainty, by which, on the disciples’ path, beset by doubts, I am enabled to say, “My Lord and my God.”

Bulletin inserts

This reflection, titled “Certain”, was written by the Rt. Rev. Dr. George Sumner, Bishop of Dallas. He has served, among other places, in central Tanganyika, Navajoland in The Episcopal Church, and as principal of Wycliffe College, Toronto. He has written a book on the relation of Christianity to other religions, a book on the theology of ordination, and a commentary on Daniel from a missiological perspective.

© 2022 The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. All rights reserved.

These weekly bulletin inserts provide information about the history, music, liturgy, mission, and ministry of The Episcopal Church. For more information, please contact us at stw@episcopalchurch.org.

Sermons That Work

For more than 20 years, Sermons That Work, a ministry of The Episcopal Church’s Office of Communication, has provided free sermons, Bible studies, bulletin inserts, and other resources that speak to congregations across the Church. Our writers and readers come from numerous and varied backgrounds, and the resources we provide are used in small house churches, sprawling cathedrals, and everything between.

Church of the Redeemer

Church of the Redeemer: Worshiping God, living in community, and reaching out to the world around us. We are an Episcopal Church serving north King County and south Snohomish County, Washington. As you travel your road, go with friends walking the way of Jesus at Redeemer.

Church of the Redeemer is at 6220 Northeast 181st Street in Kenmore, Washington. The campus is a short distance north of Bothell Way, near the Burke-Gilman Trail. The entrance looks like a gravel driveway. The campus is larger on the inside than it is on the outside. And we managed to hide a large building on the side of a hill that is not easily seen from the street.

The Episcopal Church welcomes you.